(left) The new Boone student mascot made several appearances at the Campout and the response from students was overwhelmingly positive

From all reports, DU's 2009 Campout and and hockey season ticket sale was a tremendous success. Students began camping out at 9 AM on Friday morning and attendance was significantly higher than last year. Better weather, a massive Freshman turnout, a steady stream of food and better organization was credited by students attending the event.

The Season Tickets on offer sold-out in 90 minutes, as opposed to last year, when season tickets were still available two days after the campout. By selling the tickets to eager underclassmen, the student section should be significantly more robust this season.

A true "Tent City" emerged steadily throughout the day Friday, made up mostly of Freshmen and their enthusiasm was infectious.

Coach George Gwozdecky made a rare 10 PM appearance, shaking hands with students and chatting up the crowd. The night’s festivities continued with d.u.g.s. members (DU Grilling Society) cooking for all present.

d.u.g.s provided S’mores and hot chocolate for the students, turned the huge grill into an oven to make late night frozen pizzas and in the morning greeted students with ham steaks, sausage and home-made French toast.

While the freshman stepped it up from the get go, sophomore students came through with a healthy turnout later on Friday evening. As the tents emptied early Saturday morning, the upperclassmen began to file in for their crack at tickets.

Last year, there were plenty of games when Magness’ Student Section wasn't close to capacity. This year, students without season tickets will have to buy their one-game tickets between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Monday mornings or risk of getting shut-out of the hockey games.

DU fans can expect to see a reinvigorated student section this season at Magness Arena. d.u.g.s. will also be continuing their momentum with tailgating events on Saturday's throughout the season.

32 comments:

I remember in the lean years being able to go the ticket office on a monday morn with a stack of about 10-15 id's to buy tix for my non-student friends. Then when they started cutting back to the way it is now, just amazing the progress that has been made

I remember in March 05 in the last game of the year when we were hosting CC (after they skated the McNaughten on the World Arena the night before) I had about 5 tickets and sold 3 of them outside to scalpers and random people for around 30-40 bucks a pop ($5 face).

I agree with Dirty, the minute ski season hits in November/December, you wont see 65% of the kids that were at the campout and for the most part those tickets will go unused. The worst scene is when we host the Gophers, and DU's large population of Minnesota students decide that its time to throw on the Gopher gear and sit in the student section. Happens every year.

I'm glad you don't challenge my contention that most of those students won't actually show up to games. You try to copy UND with your cute little camp out and fail. Come November you'll try to copy Wisconsin with the late arriving students, only you forget the second part about actually arriving at the game. Awesome support. *thumbs up*

Maybe you should spend a bit less time worrying about that lame little unofficial mascot of yours and a bit more time actually supporting the team.

You are aware that school is not in session come Thanksgiving right? Not to mention, when you are a freshman and four different kids on your floor have access to houses in Vail, it is kind of hard to guarantee being in town for the games.

We are able to manage our time at North Dakota and can bail all our bad boyz out of jail while still attending all the hockey games. Are you saying multitasking is beyond the skill set of the average DU student and therefore they can not worry about Boone and attend athletic events?

You are aware that hockey games happen at DU after November, right? Wait, you sound like a typical DU student so you probably did not realize this. In that case, I will help you out. There are typically numerous Denver Pioneers hockey games in the months of December-March at Magness Arena. You should look into this.

Are DU students on break from Thanksgiving to Easter? If not, your break excuse doesn't mean much.

Congrats on that #1 seed in the tournament. Did you helluva lot of good, didn't it? UND was able to beat and tie Denver while taking less penalties in both games last year. They also managed to finish ahead of the Pioneers in the WCHA while once again having less penalties. Try again, scooter!

You sure have a number of excuses for the pathetic DU students. They have to leave for break, they have to go to mommy and daddy's cabin. They have to ski. They have to do their nails. How about the truth, they just don't care about DU hockey.

As I said before, perhaps DU fans should work on their time management skills and rather than spending every waking moment worrying about Boone, they could also budget some time towards actually finding ways to get students to come to games. I guess that's too much to ask for though.

Since I am not a mind reader, I don't know if they care about DU hockey or not. What I do know is when I was a student, even if we were in the mountains, we would all gather to watch the games on TV. (Don't try the whole 'if they aren't going to the games they aren't fans argument, that is the most played out argument in the history of sports.)

You see, here in Denver there are many things to do on the weekends, many of which are quite far away from the campus. Seeing that most DU students have cars and loads of expendable cash, they may choose to do things other than attend hockey games. Does that make them bad fans? No. The people who think this way usually have nothing else in their lives except for the team they are rooting for, which makes them bitter and rather pathetic.

I made it to 70% of the games last year, by your logic that makes me a bad fan for not being at 100%?

1. I managed 60 days on snow last year and managed to get to every single DU home game while school was in session. Plus 3 road games.

2. The only reason UND has such "rabid" fans, other than the inbreeding, is the fact that there's absolutely nothing else to do in North Dakota. I've been there. If it weren't for UND hockey, the sheep would be even mor nervous than they already are...

What points are being made? The ones that re-affirm how apathetic the average DU student is when it comes to athletics. Congratulations on that I guess. Be proud of the fact that you guys don't care about your team. Your students look for any excuse not to attend the games, but I'm supposed to be impressed that they purchased 500 hockey season tickets even though most of those tickets will go unused. That is rather wishful thinking, wouldn't you say?

You would have an excellent point if UND wasn't selling games out and DU wasn't playing to 3/4 full arenas at best. Sadly, UND does sell out so there are not tickets available to many people while DU does not sell out and there are tickets available to many people.

But of course this all started by being about the lack of DU student attendance and all the lame excuses for why this occurs.

Dirty is fundamentally correct. DU students generally do not display the more rabid characteristics of other WCHA fan bases. There are many reasons for this, including private school affluence, multiple entertainment choices (including skiing) in an oversaturated market (DU is about the #10 sport in Denver), geographic dislocation (most DU students, as well as most Colorado residents for that matter, are not from the area and didn't grow up as DU fans) and an athletic administration that has only recently started to encourage fan participtation beyond the role of revenue generation.

DU will never be UM, UW or UND in fan support. But I remain encouraged by better crowds I am seeing in the last few years. There were several games last year, especially vs. Notre Dame and CC, that DU had a very active, loud and engaged student section.

"You see, here in Denver there are many things to do on the weekends, many of which are quite far away from the campus. Seeing that most DU students have cars and loads of expendable cash, they may choose to do things other than attend hockey games. Does that make them bad fans? No."

Er, yes. Yes it does. Not attending games because you have something you'd rather do does make you a bad fan. Or, rather, not a fan. Which is fine, most of the world doesn't watch hockey, but merely attending games doesn't make you a rabid fan. It just makes you a fan.

If people prioritize other recreational activities over hockey games consistently, how can you say they care about the sport?

I agree that Dirty is fundamentally correct, but he's dissing the wrong audience (at least for the most part). The people that view this blog are by in large the most die-hard DU fans that there are. People that don't prioritize sking over hockey (I also agree with your point RWD).

I've seen other WCHA arenas and our crowd support is a notch below, but still very good compared to a majority of the schools in college hockey. I'd love to see it get better and agree with Swami that there are definite signs of improvement.

One area I'll disagree with Dirty on is the issue of Boone. A lot people rally around Boone and the Bring Back Boone cheers were some of the loudest and most consistent last year. And, the Boone events that DG hosted last year that were very well attended and the students brought the excitement that DG created with them to the games.

Some times people have other things to do than go to a sporting event. It happens. It is one thing if a person buys season tickets knowing that they will only go to 2 games but it would seem to me that most of the students go to most of the games. People are out of town, they have finals, they may be sick, they may have some other obligation, they may just decide that they would rather stay home on a Friday or Saturday night. DU students in general have a lot of other options competing for their time and sometimes attending the game is not the first option. It does not mean that they aren't fans of the team, or that they are bad fans, it just means that they may have other interests. If DU students wanted to do something every week to impress other people whose opinions don't matter, they'd go to church.

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